Bus Stop - Dobrusa

The Soviet-era shelter in Dobrusa is utilitarian, a box-like concrete volume topped with a steep blue metal roof that has been recently replaced or repainted. This plain bus stop is brightened only by a mosaic of a woman with a sunflower - except her face is missing. It’s tempting to link this to Ottoman-era aniconism in what was then its vassal state Moldavia, but given the stop was built in 1980s (given the surrealist colorings that recall Kandinsky in the sunflower heads ), that would be about five centuries off. More likely, the culprit is weather or perhaps a mischievous hand. The sunflower a common symbol of life and fertility within Soviet iconography but particularly resonant with local agricultural identity in Moldova.